It is not till long--nearly a year--after the date of the preceding letter, that anything appears to intimate the existence of a coldness, much less of an open rupture, between Granvelle and the discontented nobles. Meanwhile, the religious troubles in France had been fast gathering to a head; and the opposite factions ranged themselves under the banners of their respective chiefs, prepared to decide the question by arms. Philip the Second, who stood forth as the champion of Catholicism, not merely in his own dominions, but throughout Christendom, watched with anxiety the struggle going forward in the neighboring kingdom. It had the deeper interest for him, from its influence on the Low Countries. His Italian possessions were separated from France by the Alps; his Spanish, by the Pyrenees. But no such mountain barrier lay between France and Flanders. They were not even separated, in the border provinces, by difference of language. Every shock given to France must necessarily be felt in the remotest corner of the Netherlands. Granvelle was so well aware of this, that he besought the king to keep an eye on his French neighbors, and support them in the maintenance of the Roman Catholic religion. "That they should be maintained in this is quite as important to us as it is to them. Many here," he adds, "would be right glad to see affairs go badly for the Catholics in that kingdom. No noble as yet among us has openly declared himself. Should any one do so, God only could save the country from the fate of France."[536] Acting on these hints, and conformably to his own views, Philip sent orders to the regent to raise two thousand men, and send them across the borders to support the French Catholics. The orders met with decided resistance in the council of state. The great Flemish lords, at this time, must have affected, if they did not feel, devotion to the established religion. But they well knew there was too large a leaven of heresy in the country to make these orders palatable. They felt no desire, moreover, thus unnecessarily to mix themselves up with the feuds of France. They represented that the troops could not safely be dispensed with in the present state of feeling at home; and that, if they marched against the Protestants of France, the German Protestants might be expected to march against them.